French startup Smiirl has created the Fliike, a design-oriented display of a simple metric of increasing importance to small business owners: their Facebook likes. The Fliike is meant to be displayed in a storefront to bridge the gap between a business’ physical and virtual presences. The Internet of Things is hardly a new concept, but Smiirl’s delivery of it in such an elegant package could redirect the Internet of Things movement towards simple, single-data-point-driven devices providing the link between the digital and physical worlds.
Tag: Facebook
What Facebook Hashtags Mean For Marketers
Facebook has added hashtags recently, following in the footsteps of Twitter. While privacy settings will still be in effect, the new feature will give brand’s hashtag campaigns a much wider audiences as it can naturally extend to Facebook. It will also give marketers a better measure of engagement than the ubiquitous “like” as it indicates relevance and recency. That being said, do not expect it to have quite the same impact as Twitter as Facebook does not lend itself to real-time conversations in the same way.
Instagram Video And Facebook Hashtags Borrow Twitter’s Model
Yesterday saw the big announcement that Facebook has been hinting at for weeks: video for Instagram, in the form of short 15-second clips. The basic intention of playing catchup to Vine is obvious, but in combination with Facebook’s support for hashtags, the shift in direction indicates an even larger shift towards branding and marketers. Hashtags are a convenient way to organize real-time conversation and create an anchor for people to connect to trending topics – and that’s precisely what marketers want, to be a part of these big discussions. Facebook’s prior ad model, in essence, makes the consumer a pitch-man for a product that they might or might not genuinely enjoy. But the new video and hashtag functions, in combination with the elimination of promoted stories, signals an about face. And it’s no accident that Instagram videos are 15 seconds long, the same exact length as the average TV commercial. Facebook and Twitter are now facing off in a veritable battle for real-time broadcast advertising.
Facebook Boasts 1 Million Active Advertisers
Facebook announced yesterday that it has more than one million businesses actively advertising on the social network. The “vast majority” of those businesses and advertisers are small businesses, according to Dan Levy, Facebook’s director of small business. Much of the feedback from these small businesses is to keep advertising simple on Facebook, and perhaps with that message in mind Facebook announced plans to cut the number of ad products in half in order to streamline the ad experience for those looking to use the network for marketing.
Amazon Introduces Gift Card Sharing
Amazon’s Friends and Family Gifting feature gets more social today with the launch of a tool that allows users to create and send group gift cards to your Facebook friends for their birthdays. By connecting Facebook and Amazon accounts, it’s easy to prepare birthday gift cards in advance, and participants can contribute as little as $1 or as much as $25 of yet. The gift card is delivered to the recipient’s Facebook wall on their birthday. It’s a new, foolproof way to ensure that you never miss a friend’s birthday again.
Instagram To Launch Videos June 20
Beginning June 20, Instagram will be launching video service, allowing users create and share 5-10 second videos. The announcement comes on the heels of recent news that Vine has surpassed Instagram for Twitter sharing. While Vine has taken off, Facebook’s Instagram does have the advantage of their existing 100 million user base who will not have to install a new app to begin creating videos. Twitter and Facebook have not played nice with integration of their subsidiaries so do not expect inline views of these videos on Twitter.
Private Social Networks Emerge
Popular Social Networks are experiencing a bit of a “Mainstreaming” effect these days: baby pictures, couples, and the public airing of private pictures that get likes from that relative you didn’t even know had a Facebook – not to mention more serious information privacy concerns. So “private social networks” have gained traction recently, and ensure that you’ll always have a space to share photos, collaborate on projects, or organize carpools without revealing this information to the rest of the world. Examples include Everyme (organized like Google+, its simple UI coupled with data privacy guarantees security), Notabli (a private photo-sharing network that allows users to share photos and videos of their children with other family members), and Nextdoor (a hyper-local social networks that promises an easy way to keep in touch with neighbors). Whether these online communities gain as much traction as Facebook or Twitter remains to be seen, but it is important to note that privacy concerns are drawing people away from big social communities online, and that these new networks are a result of that.
How Facebook Will Refine Graph Search
All new features require an adoption period where users familiarize themselves with the tech. Graph Search is one of Facebook’s most ambitious initiatives that places Facebook at the center of online discovery, but also brings with it some serious user challenges. This article from Gigaom shows both the machine learning and human intervention required to streamline the product to gain mass adoption.
Pipe App Brings File Transfer To Facebook
File transfer on Facebook is finally a reality, thanks to an app called Pipe that launched this week. Pipe, based in Berlin, allows people to drag and drop music, documents, video, and pictures into a virtual green tube that connects Facebook friends in real time. Friends can receive the documents even if they don’t have the Pipe app or aren’t online. As well, Pipe supports files that are up to 1GB, which is a significant increase over the 100MB email limit.
Waze Integrates Facebook Event Navigatio
The crowd-sourced directions provider today proved that it’s showing Facebook exactly what it’s missing. Before, users had to sift through Facebook to find the event, copy and paste the data into Google maps, and follow Google’s direction. Now, if you RSVP to an event on Facebook and click the Facebook button on Waze, directions will appear 48 hours prior to the event. If there is no address listed in the event, other guests can input the correct address. Waze will also show you the locations and timing of other friends who have RSVP’d to the event, allowing you to track their progress. How this affects the three-way bidding war for the startup remains to be seen, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction; social driving just got a major upgrade.
